A Place to Stand

Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Having promised/threatened to declare Dalgety Bay beach to be radioactive waste by March if the MoD did not pay them an unspecified and unspecifiable amount of danegeld the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) have started to back down.

In November last year, SEPA set deadlines for MOD to provide a credible remediation plan for the area to prevent the need to designate Dalgety Bay as radioactive contaminated land, the first such designation in the UK. However, work carried out for SEPA over the winter months showed that the situation at the beach was more complicated than initially believed, and therefore a comprehensive investigation is required, before remediation options can be identified.

Dr James Gemmill, SEPA's Radioactive Substances Unit Manager, said:
"We are satisfied that real progress is being made and, as a result, we will not be designating the beach at this time.

But the threat remains if they can get away with it

by the end of May 2013, SEPA will be in full possession of technical issues;...... At that stage we will expect action to follow urgently.

"We would prefer that the contamination at Dalgety Bay is dealt with on a voluntary basis so we can avoid the need for designation. However, SEPA can still designate the area at any time, depending on circumstances. This would be done if SEPA considers that work undertaken by MOD is inadequate, or further relevant information comes to light, or if there is no voluntary remediation following these investigations."

Meanwhile the Scottish Information Commissioner has told me that I have to make a further appeal for SEPA to specifically answer the FoIs (which they are legally required to answer within 20 working days & don't) before determining whether they should start enforcing the law. So here goes.

Dear SEPA,
Regarding my various FoIs here & numerously here about the evidence that Dalgety Bay is a "radiation hazard", going back to 12th Feb 2009 when you asserted that neither SEPA nor its officers are under a duty to answer such questions and threatened legal action if I investigated. While this was clearly contrary to law it is the road you have followed ever since. I have now been asked to appeal this refusal and once again ask you to provide the specific information requested. Not merely to say it is somewhere on our website, particularly when this is not true.

I particularly wish factual responses to these 3 major previously asked questions:

1 - SEPA have claimed & continuously maintained for over 3 years, that particles of radioactivity could not possibly be natural because they had been scientifically proven to be made of paint. Obviously if SEPA is not wholly, completely and totally corrupt there must be specific unequivocal tested evidence for this yet for that period you have refused to produce it. Please produce the specific scientific proof.

2 - SEPA have publicly claimed to have found the "daughter elements" of radium yet have refused to provide evidence. Obviously if SEPA is not wholly, completely and totally corrupt there must be specific unequivocal tested evidence for this yet for that period you have refused to produce it. Please produce the specific scientific proof.

This is particularly disgraceful since the scientific community say that the sole daughter element of radium
is radon; that radon is an inert gas that thus could not possibly be found as part of rock; and that in any case the amount of it produced at any one time would be orders of magnitude less than that of radium (it is undisputed that the amount of manmade radium there cannot be more than 0.26 of a gram or 1/4 of what is naturally there, in this 1.5 million tons of soil). If SEPA have found the plural daughter elements then much of physics must be discounted and it is disgraceful that you should keep this amazing discovery from humanity.

3 - SEPA have claimed and maintained you have provably found radium. Obviously if SEPA is not wholly, completely and totally corrupt there must be specific unequivocal tested evidence for this since then you have refused to produce it. Please produce the specific scientific proof.

Since it would be unwise to let your refusal to answer FoI's slow the investigation I am also asking these new questions under the FoI or other appropriate Acts.

4 - What was the specific scientifically proven finding or findings since 30th November which has led you to say "work carried out for SEPA over the winter months showed that the situation at the beach was more complicated than initially believed" . This reverses your promise/threat, briefed to the MP Gordon Brown that SEPA , within 3 months "Scottish Environment Protection Agency still says that, unless the Ministry of Defence can give assurances, it will designate the land as radioactive".

5 - It has been acknowledged that SEPA have made no effort to use any close beach as a control to determine whether the radiation detected is in any measurable way excessive and thus, possibly, introduced by man. Obviously this is basic to making any scientific evaluation of the existence of any radiation beyond ordinary background. I now wish to know what efforts, if any, has SEPA made to use a beach near Dounraey as a similar control? Obviously this is basic to making any scientific evaluation of the existence of any radiation beyond ordinary background.

6 - The entire thesis that radiation close to (or at) normal background is in any way harmful depends entirely on the Linear Non-Threshold Theory of radiation danger (LNT). I would like to know what scientific evidence, not hearsay or assertion, SEPA have used to make you accept this theory as true? I ask this because, as far as i can determine, there is no actual evidential proof of this theory at or even close to, the levels involved. Indeed that the evidence that there is points in the opposite direction - to the theory known as hormesis, that at low levels radiation is beneficial to health. The laboratory evidence of hormesis at the cellular level in plants and cultures goes back nearly a century and seems unchallenged. Obviously theories without evidential support, such as astrology and homoeopathy are not scientific and if SEPA is a scientific organisation cannot be promoting the radiation scare without clear proof of harm.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Some time ago I wrote of Dr Patrick Collins evidence to Parliament about how the 1960 British rocket plane the SR53 could be used as the basis of a suborbital craft. I have since had some email discussion with him (he is currently in Japan - you go where the work is) and he and David Ashford who runs Bristol Spaceplanes politely listened to my ideas.

Ascender is a small sub-orbital spaceplane designed to use existing technology and to pave the way for later vehicles on our development sequence. Ascender is specifically designed to generate spaceplane revenues at minimum development cost and risk, and thereby to be attractive to private-sector investment.Ascender carries one pilot and one passenger or experiment. The passenger remains strapped in his/her seat during the flight. Ascender takes off from an ordinary airfield using its turbo-fan engine and climbs at subsonic speed to a height of 8 km. The pilot then starts the rocket engine and pulls up into a steep climb. Ascender has a maximum speed of around Mach 3 on a steep climb and can reach a height of 100 km....

Ascender would be the first spaceplane capable of taking off under its own power and of making several flights to space per day...

Ascender would be the first spaceplane capable of taking off under its own power and of making several flights to space per day....

The cost to early operational use is comparable to that of just one fighter aeroplane off the production line. This remarkably low cost is made possible by the design concept and by excluding any component not essential for the basic mission.

This is basically the updated SR43 he had discussed. It is relatively unspecific about the cost but since I am not in the technical loop I feel able to point out that the "average unit costs of Nato fighters is $112 million" (£71 million) and we have some below average cost planes so pretty much the same as the £50 million he first told Parliament.

A suborbital like this is clearly commercial in the tourist industry (2 flights a day at £120,000 matching Virgin is £87 million a year); could allow endless experimental packages experimenting on the production on new zero-G materials; and should, militarily be usable as a platform for anti-missile satellites, as used by the US.

a fully reusable spaceplane designed to use only existing technology. It is in effect an enlarged and refined Ascender—or a much-simplified Concorde—only Spacecab will be air-launched from a carrier aeroplane, also derived from Ascender. It could start passenger operations much earlier than a new vehicle that requires new engines to be developed....

fully reusable orbital operations soon and at minimum development cost and risk. The cost of developing Spacecab is equivalent to about three Shuttle flights. Spacecab is a candidate to be the first orbital spaceplane, as it has the lowest cost and risk of any contending project.The orbiter carries a crew of two and has a cabin with a capacity for six passengers or space station crew or a payload of up to 750 kg of cargo. Its blunt, swept-back shape reflects the fact that streamlining is not required for flight in space and reduces heating during reentry into the atmosphere.Spacecab's most basic design features have been selected so that existing technology can be used. As such, it can be readily certifiable for airline standards. It therefore incorporates as many conventional airliner design features as practicable, such as carrying pilots and taking off and landing horizontally.In order to use existing engines and proven materials, and to have the margins required for civil certification, the booster has four turbojet engines to provide the power for take-off, acceleration to Mach 2, flyback and landing, plus two rocket engines to accelerate Spacecab from Mach 2 to Mach 4, at which point the orbiter will separate...

As Spacecab can be built using existing technology, Spacecab's development should not be that much more difficult than a high-performance aeroplane....The development cost and timescale of the prototype of each stage should be comparable with that of the prototype of an advanced aeroplane, and the estimated total cost is approximately $1 billion. (£600 mill) This prototype could be used for early operational flights to orbit and would be ideal for launching small satellites and ferrying crews and passengers to and from space.Spacecab was the subject of a feasibility study funded by the European Space Agency (contract number 10411/93/F/TB) in 1993-1994. The main conclusions were that new technology was not needed for an operational prototype and that development cost to initial operations would be equivalent to the cost of just two or three Shuttle flights. This study was broadly endorsed by an independent review commissioned by the then UK Minister for Space, Ian Taylor, MP.

Personally I would be happy to see it initially operating at lower than civil aircraft certification levels (ie landing by glide not engines rather like thingamajig and the military providing the air launch facilities with an existing craft. That would reduce costs and increase capacity but is entirely dependent on political support, which is the problem.

Spacebus is sufficient to industrialise earth orbit and as long as there is a a space station where the bits can be put together, to produce pretty much anything. 3 planes (the credible minimum for any fleet, launching twice a day could put 1.6 million kg a year. There are also a number of high acceleration launch systems suitable for getting cargo but not people up, which would work well in tandem with this people mover.

Or we could go to Spacebus Spacebus, BSP's second generation orbital spaceplane, is a larger version of Spacecab, itself an evolution of Ascender. The design of Spacebus is such that a prototype could be built a few years after Spacecab without requiring a significant programme of enabling technology. Spacebus weighs about twice as much as Concorde, which is probably close to the practicable upper limit for a spaceplane using existing runways. Both stages are piloted and take-off and land horizontally.

...designed to carry fifty people or equivalent cargo....

The carrier aeroplane accelerates to Mach 4 using turbo-ramjets of new design but with existing technology. Rocket engines are then used to accelerate to Mach 6 and to climb to the edge of space where air and thermal loads are low. The orbiter then separates and accelerates to orbit....

A useful comparison can be made with a new supersonic or hypersonic airliner. The cost per flight would be approximately $125,000 (250 passengers at $500 each). Such an airliner would be of comparable size and shape to the lower stage of Spacebus.In broad-brush terms, the two vehicles should have a comparable cost per flight when Spacebus has matured to airliner standards. The upper stage is more advanced but is also smaller; as such, the smaller size counters the increased complexity. We can roughly estimate that its cost will be approximate to the lower stage. Thus the Spacebus upper stage also has an estimated cost per flight of the same order.

The least mature systems of Spacebus, in terms of life and maintenance requirements, are the thermal protection system, rocket motors, hydrogen fuel system, and transparencies. However, this is a lot less ambitious than many spaceplane proposals, and there is no reason why the maturation of these systems should involve more than straight-forward product improvement over a decade or two of operational experience.As with any aeroplane development for commercial use it will take several years of in-service experience and continuous product improvement.

Bearing in mind that we are much better off than previous generations a system that can put 50 people in orbit at the same cost as 250 on an international flight (ie $2500/£1,600) this is cheaper, comparatively, than emigration to Australia in my youth. It has proven possible to settle Australia (actually it proved possible a century and a half earlier.

So Getting It Done

The way Bristol are planning it they are intending to build Ascender and bootstrap their way up to Spacebus. That is perfectly feasible but since "new technology was not needed" for Spacebus there seems no technological reason to wait. Particularly with SpaceX and others pushing forward.

So why don't they?

As Heinlein said the answer to any question that starts why don't they is money. But in this case it is also politics.

When Thatcher said she wanted the Channel Tunnel built by the market ot didn't just happen She and other ministers did a bit of discreet pressure on the pension funds and other big financiers put up £4 bn. They eventually lost much of it when the Tunnel went bust but I don't think anybody would dispute that Britain is better off with the tunnel. "Building infrastructure specially transport infrastructure" is almost the only situation where government spending is beneficial because the multiplier effects of such investment are far greater than elsewhere. A system that can get people cheaply to orbit is the ultimate in transport.

If Bristol have not yet got £50 million from the market to build Ascender, or perhaps the regulatory permision it is because the politicians are actively against it. Investors don't invest where government discourages it. This fits with the record of Dr Collins before the Science & Technology Committee where a number of the MPs put more effort into discouraging anything on the grounds that if we got a successful British commercial industry we would see American businessmen flying over here to do business & thus producing carbon. Reallyt

I am sure that one government minister or perhaps even well known backbencher telling the City of London that a £50 m invested in Ascender would be in the national interest and that the government would do its best to make it commercial, would bring forward enough investment to get it going. A Russian oligarch wishing to settle here would find it got him more respect than funding a football club - assuming the politicians weren't actively against it..

Supportive words from across the government would get the £600 million for Spacebus. This is 1/7th what the Channel Tunnel cost in money that has been inflating for over 20 years.

Of course government could also fund it from the £275 million annually we give to the ESA bureaucrats; or the £450 million we give to NERC, one of many quangos existing to promote global warming carastrophism. Or we could put up about 1/3rd (£20 million for Ascender, £200 million for Spacebus) as an X-Prize - a Harverd study showed that innovation prizes normally cost about 30% to the donor of what the winner spends

£20 million is the Saltire Prize the Scottish government have put up for a successful sea turbine. Tnns is orders of magnitude more important &if Scotland alone put up this prize it would a significant way to getting our economy into a technological hub.

If Britain doesn't do this and become the world leader in space development (& get into the biggest economic boom since Columbus) it is not in any way because we can't afford it. It will be because the politicians have deliberately decided they don't want progress, they want Luddism.

When our governors made it impossible for the team that created Dolly the Sheep to work they moved to Singapore (growth rate 14.4% with a strong biotech element) where they were welcomed with open arms.

I am a British patriot and would love to see our country achieve this. But I am a human patriot first and if our government continue to set their face against it I hope Mr Ashford will achieve something that even this government and the EU recognise as practical for Singapore or New Mexico or Dubai or Volgograd or Tokyo or Shanghai or Rio or Adelaide or Vancouver Spaceplanes rather than Bristol.

And if he is forced to do that we will all know exactly whose fault that will be.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

The OECD's outlook is gloomier than the forecasts of the Government and many economists, who expect the UK economy to return to growth in the first quarter of 2012, meaning a double-dip recession will be avoided.

So we are in recession and the very best might be that we keep bobbing along at around zero. And why would that be.

March 29 (Reuters) - German utilities E.ON and RWE have pulled out of a 15 billion pound ($23.78 billion) plan to build new nuclear power stations in Britain, throwing into doubt the UK government's push for a new fleet of nuclear plants by 2025.
The companies said Germany's sudden decision to phase out nuclear power, the high running costs of their Horizon joint venture and the long lead times required for nuclear plants resulted in the decision to sell the venture.
"A strategic decision has therefore been made by both RWE and E.ON that they will not develop new nuclear power projects in the UK through the Horizon joint venture," the companies said in a statement, confirming what sources close to the negotiations had earlier told Reuters.

Apparently the government has said they are "disappointed" by this decision. Typical attempt to shift the blame. The sole reason they are going; indeed the sole reason they aren't already building; indeed the sole reason enough reactors to keep the economy growing fast haven't been completed long ago is because of the government.

The overwhelming balance of costs in the nuclear industry is government parasitism. At £800 million a unit the £15 bn here would have paid for 19 GW of power. Add in the £14 bn the French recently paid for Britain's generators, not for the generator's themselves but for the fact that the ground they stand on is the only place new generators will be allowed and that would have made 36 gigawatts - short but not far short of all our current capacity.

More than enough to stop the lights going out if the parasites wanted it. More than enough to end most of the 25,000 annual excess winter deaths. More than enough to not only get us out of recession but into fast growth at least matching China's Let no MP not willing to denounce his party for this treason against the British people ever claim to care about the country's wellbeing.

93% of electricity costs are political theft. Without that there is no question that these companies would be building and making money. No honest politician can deny that nuclear is easily the safest and least environmentally intrusive way of generating power. In which case no honest politician can claim that regulations which increase prices thus:

Some plants completed in the late 1980s have cost as much as $5 billion, 30 times what they cost 15 years earlier. Inflation, of course, has played a role, but the consumer price index increased only by a factor of 2.2 between 1973 and 1983, and by just 18% from 1983 to 1988.

& in fact this regulatory parasitism continues. From the above the regulatory increase between 1973 and 1983 was (30/2.2) 13.6 times. Extrapolating that over 39 years to 2012 would make 26,353 times or only 0.004% of the cost of reactors would be the original engineering and legitimate safety costs. I hope the reality is that the growth in parasitism slowed significantly but the basics are clear.

On that basis we have a 13.6 fold increase in costs over those 10 years. So in the 39 years between 1979 and 2012 it would be 26,351 times or that the real engineering and legitimate safety cost of nuclear would be 0.004% of the total. It is possible that the trend has slowed somewhat since 1983.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

GLASGOW will have a new modernised Subway by 2020 following the announcement of a quarter of a billion pounds for the project.
The programme will involved buying a fleet of new driverless trains, refurbishments at all 15 stations, a new signalling system to prevent delays and a new smartcard ticket system similar to the London Oyster card, but even more advanced.
The Evening Times yesterday revealed how the Scottish Government pledged £246million for the works, meaning operators SPT will not have to borrow the cash as was previously thought.
SPT will now make up the remaining £41.5m needed from its own capital budget.

The driverless trains bit was first suggested by me in a speech I sent to then Transport Minister Nicol Stephen in 2004. Before I started this blog but reprinted here.

And it will be done by 2020 (if it goes to plan ;-) ) a mere 16 years later.The rate of technological progress in the Scottish Soviet Socialist Republic is indeed breathtaking.

I did also mention it several times subsequently. Here and as part of the 9% Growth Party programme.(#9 ) of what I described as the best and most innovative programme of any Scottish party - with hindsight that now seems indisputable even if it didn't get the coverage.

However I am not writing this simply to say I told everybody so but to examine the figures produced.

It is to cost £297.5 million for a series of things "driverless trains, refurbishments at all 15 stations, a new signalling system to prevent delays and a new smartcard ticket system" of which my proposal is a quarter. So a guesstimate of 1/4 would be reasonable.

The Glasgow Subway is 6.5 miles while the Glasgow Edinburgh rail line is 45. On the other hand the Subway uses 15 stations while the intercity train stops at 4. The conventional trains are bigger but that has no bearing on driving control systems. The Subway trains arrive every 3 well 5 well 7 minutes whereas the Edinburgh train is half hourly. On the basis of 2 of those the automated subway system is the more complicated.

Still waiting for any politician from the major parties to come up with an explanation of where the missing money, for which they are legally responsible, goes.

So it is reasonable to assume that the Glasgow - Edinburgh line could be automated at just under £10 million if there were no politicians involved.

Even if there are it should be about £75 million.

And probably less than 10 times that for the entire Scottish rail system.

Automated rail means it is possible to substantially reduce running costs; greatly increase capacity by running single carriage units every few minutes; reduce the time passengers spend waiting by sending carriages every few minutes (for most this would save at least as much time as increasing train speed); allow trains to run 24/7; allow more flexibility in destinations since there are so many single units. Automated rail would be competitive, or more than competitive, with road for the first time in 80 years. That it has not happened is proof of the stultifying effects of top down control over economic activity, compared to the bottom up decision making that the roads run on. Automated rail has been possible for at least a generation. With modern computer capacity it automated road driving and even flying is being developed so rail is obviously child's play. So perhaps it is not too optimistic to think politicians may manage the start of it by 2020.

Instead Dellors tore apart the "97%" lie and proved that Bacon was ignorant both of Dellors' book, which it was made obvious he hadn't read, but of any part of the alarmist case as well.

The "97%" claim is widely used by alarmists, not least by the BBC. Here is why it is a deliberate lie.

First, it was the claim that 2,500 IPCC-related scientists agreed with the 2007 IPCC report. Soon after it was discovered that the actual number of scientists who actually agreed with the report contents was only 25.

Next, when the 2,500 shrunk to 25, a couple of University of Illinois researchers conjured up a 2-minute online, anonymous survey that they hoped would deliver some big numbers to crow about. They solicited 10,257 earth scientists and only 77 chose to answer the online survey (yes, only 77). 75 of those “climate scientists” agreed with the survey’s two questions (yes, only 2 questions).

Voila, the infamous and widely publicised “97%” of climate scientists (75 divided by 77) who thought man was the cause of global warming turned out to be a numeric joke.

On top of that all the question asked was whether mankind was having some effect on bringing about warming - nothing on whether it was a serious effect let alone one so catastrophic as to warrant spending these billions. On this more later. So of a self selected fraction of a selected fraction of government funded scientists it was only possible to find 75 who supported even the concept of anthropogenic global warming let alone anything catastrophic.

Bacon's ignorance was demonstrated by the fact that, at no time in the interview, did he attempt to introduce any factual arguments. It was entirely that it is the opinion of these 75 and some others but no discussion of any factual basis they may have had. In the end he was reduced to asking "is it possible that these scintists predictions may be right" without even being capable of answering James' response as to what
the specific predictions are. In fact these predictions range from Hansen's 0.5 C a decade claimed in 1988, through the Guardian's claim that the netherlands will be underwater by 2007 (both of which have definitely not come true) through to predictions of warming so low as to be virtually undetectable (which has). Clearly if he doesn't know what his question is it is difficult to complain about the answer.

However to show the problem with fighting BBC corruption - a couple of hours after this attempted demolition.the same channel did an interview with an eco-nutter who wants a ban on Britain exploiting any of the oil in British Atlantic waters, possibly depriving the British people of as many hundreds of billions as have come from the North sea.

The BBC, being bound by its Charter to "balance" and respecting the law first spent a couple of hours saying how they were going to interview an econazi and then started by asking him a range of hostile questions while interrupting his answers introduced him as favourably as possible as an "environmentalist", asked him the softest possible and most supportive questions, gave him time, without interruption, to say everything he wanted and even went so far as to editorialise, when the econnazis only serious reason for banning this was that not burning oil would reduce CO2 that "cutting CO2 is a good thing". The BBC thereby proved that they are a national; news service of unique integrity a wholly corrupt, propaganda organisation every single employee of whom is obscene scum willing to tell any lie and censor any fact in the cause of the state fascism, no matter how damaging to the country or how many people are murdered by them.

On the more later:

By the standard, or actually far more factual than the standard, which allows corrupt journalists to claim "97%" of scientists on their side (4,810,000 so far) there is an opposite conclusion to be drawn.

So, ignoring even the fact that 31,564 is a much larger number than 77 & thus a much more statistically valid sample; that, while in both cases the sample is equally self selected by those who answered it in the latter case it is open to all scientists, in the former it is only open to a small subsection of scientists all, or almost all, of whom are paid by government to hold such beliefs....

Over 99.75% of scientists agree that catastrophic global warming is a lie and that that saying "cutting CO2 is a good thing" is a total lie, at least methodology our MSM aspire to.

This will be going to the world's media and we may say for a certainty that every single honest journalist will be far more willing to publish the 99.75% of scientists say CO2 rise is beneficial than the opposite.